"Anything that we can do to make our chances of finding an abducted child or a high-risk missing person is worthwhile.”

Queensland introduced AMBER alerts in 2015, and directly links solving six of the 15 high-risk cases to the system.

Suzie Ratcliffe's sister Joanne was aged 11 when she and Kirsty Gordon went missing from an Adelaide oval in 1973.

"Would Facebook and AMBER alerts have been advantageous at the time of Joanne's and Kirsty's disappearance in 1973? In my mother's words, a resounding, 'a bloody hell yes'," she said

Emily Vacher from Facebook's trust and safety team said it was "another tool in the toolbox for law enforcement".

Ms Vacher said Facebook was bringing communities together in a "common mission to protect children".

Victoria's Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said they would use the alert system for future cases, if the need arose.

AMBER alerts are named after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted in Texas in 1996, and have been adopted by law enforcement bodies around the world as a way to send critical information about abductions, via the media, to the public.

There are about 20,000 reports of minors going missing in Australia every year and Ms Vacher said police will only turn to the system when there is a high risk of death or injury and they have useful information

Australia is the 13th country to use the Facebook system, following Jamaica and Luxembourg, who introduced it last month.